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Somebody slides a list of face-swap tools across the table and calls it the video plan. The brief on the other side of the table is plainer. A client wants thirty seconds of a product, at 1080p, with enough money left for a second take if the first camera move is wrong. A swapped face does not answer that. A second of picture does.
That second is the whole argument. Who sells it, at what rate, and what they refuse to sell alongside it.
The list was for a different purchase
A face-swap tool sells a different face inside a clip that already exists. A photo editor sells a still: smoother skin, a cleaner background, a headshot that stops moving. Both can be honest products. Neither is the model you open when the client is paying for a scene.
The scene has a product, a place, and a camera. A bottle on a wet street at night. A slow push from a medium shot into the label. No stranger’s face borrowed to make the frame feel finished. If the list you were handed is mostly face replacement and portrait retouching, send it back. You are shopping for seconds.
What that second costs on T1
Topview T1 is the first video model Topview introduced. It makes the clip. It does not enlarge an old, soft file into a sharp one, and it does not paste one person’s face onto another.
Output is 720p or 1080p. The price they publish is for 1080p, and they recommend 1080p for ordinary production. Every member pays 2.2 credits a second. The list price beside that is 2.75 credits a second. The 1080p rate does not step up because you are on a cheaper plan, so the retake is not locked behind a higher tier.
Thirty seconds at 1080p is printed as 6.60 US dollars on T1. The same page prints 17.55 US dollars for those thirty seconds on Seedance 2.5, about 62 percent less, and says the gap is there to spend on more shots. Ultra Annual members also receive 30 days of unlimited T1 generation. A clip can run up to 30 seconds. The minutes you generate are not the minutes left in the cut. Ten tries of five seconds are fifty seconds on the bill, even if you keep one of them.
You can start from words, from a picture, or from a pile of references. As many as 50 assets can mix image, video, and audio, to steer the look and the sound. Dialogue and subtitles can be multilingual. Commercial use follows the plan and the terms in force, and it still requires the right to every file you upload.
The page’s own beginner scene is five seconds, 1080p, 16:9, with no dialogue: a woman on a quiet street in the rain, neon in the puddles, the camera easing from a medium shot to her face. That is a sample of the control, not a film we shot. It shows the unit you are buying. Five seconds to learn the light. Thirty if the scene earns them.
The other samples on the page, a clockwork fox, a music-video performance, a night crime beat, a classroom confrontation, a seaside game, are there to show range. They are not a scorecard against anyone else’s reel.
The model the page prices next to it
Seedance 2.5 sits on the same platform and aims at the same length of story. Its own page describes a clip of 4 to 30 seconds, from text, image, video, and audio. It takes up to 50 references too, and it splits them: as many as 30 images, 10 videos whose combined length stays inside 30 seconds, and 10 audio files inside the same limit. You can mark shots with second-level timestamps, and you can revise one segment while the rest of the clip is meant to hold.
Visible export on that page tops out at 1080p. A frame in the generator can show 720p. Images used as references can be larger than the video you export. Trial credits are shown before you generate. A free try may be a restricted preset. It is not unlimited. Commercial use, again, depends on the plan and the licence at export.
Read those two pages side by side and the split is practical, not mystical. Seedance 2.5 is the pass you open when the brief needs a timed shot list and a segment you can redo without throwing out the minute. T1 is the pass you open when the brief is a 1080p scene, the next take has to cost the same for every person on the account, and the finance director wants the thirty-second number on one line. The T1 page says that 1080p can stand with Seedance 2.5. The number under that sentence is the part you can check before the meeting. We have not run the two models on one brief and scored the pictures.
| Topview T1 | Seedance 2.5 | A face-swap tool | A photo editor | |
| What you are buying | A scene at 1080p | A directed pass, timed and segmented | A different face in a clip | A still |
| Length on the page | Up to 30 seconds | 4 to 30 seconds | Not this job | No second at all |
| 30 seconds at 1080p | 6.60 US dollars, as T1’s page prints it | 17.55 US dollars, as T1’s page prints it | Not priced here | None |
| The rate | 2.2 credits a second, every member | Shown before you generate | ||
| References | Up to 50, image, video, and audio | Up to 50, with the 30 / 10 / 10 split | ||
| The control the page names | Another take at the same rate | Timestamps and a local segment edit |
Keep the takes where you can still throw one out
Topview is the workspace around either model. You describe the idea, paste the line the client actually approved, add a reference, or point at the product page. It plans the shots, selects among the models there, generates the assets, and leaves each shot editable on the Canvas. A prompt, a link, an image, a video, or a mix of those can start the work. T1 makes the clip. The workspace is where take one sits beside take two.
What the plan includes, and what a generation spends, is listed before you run it. You still send the file yourself. The workspace does not publish the client’s page, and it does not decide that the second take matched the brief. You watch it.
A generated face belongs to the character in the scene. It is not your client, not a colleague, and not a person pulled from a clip you found online, unless that person agreed to be shown and agreed to the voice. Swapping them in would be the purchase you already turned down.
What you say when the list comes back
Tell the room which second you are buying. On T1, a 1080p second is 2.2 credits for every member, and thirty of them are listed at 6.60 US dollars. On Seedance 2.5, the same thirty seconds are listed at 17.55 US dollars on T1’s page, and the model adds timestamps and a segment edit. A face-swap tool is a third conversation, about permission. A photo editor never starts the clock.
Then ask which take you are willing to throw away. The cheaper second is only useful if you are allowed to spend it twice.
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Image source: Topview | AI generated
